


A Revelation In The Light of Day

by cordeliadelayne



Category: Primeval
Genre: F/M, Getting Together, Kissing, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-01
Updated: 2016-09-01
Packaged: 2018-08-12 10:15:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7930855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cordeliadelayne/pseuds/cordeliadelayne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Actions often speak louder than words. Especially when you're trying to get through to Nick Cutter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Revelation In The Light of Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reggietate](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=reggietate).



> Written as a Christmas present for reggietate who wanted to see how far Jenny would go to stop Cutter going into the burning ARC after Helen.
> 
> Originally posted to Livejournal in 2011.

Helen.

Why did it always come down to Helen? If it wasn't her presence, it was her absence, eating away at him.

He'd never have believed all those years ago when she first went missing, that he'd ever wish her harm. But now he did.

It wasn't often, Cutter wasn't that kind of man, but every so often he wished he'd turned up in a universe where Helen had died, not gone missing. He ran scenarios in his head, on those few occasions when stopping the world from descending into Hell allowed him to. He thought about how things would be different, what he could have done differently. How _he'd_ be different. How everything would have changed if he'd realised that Stephen was as vulnerable to Helen’s manipulations as he himself had once been.

But in all his imaginings the situation had got better. Not worse. Certainly never as bad as this, with his wife twisted into a creature he barely recognised. He should have seen the signs before she went off to the Forest of Dean but he had been too wrapped up in the idea of his failing marriage to find his way out.

He'd failed her. Failed the vows he'd made. Set the promises he'd made aside. Believed in a tomorrow where everything would be better than the day before, but done nothing to make it so. He'd thought that wanting his marriage to work was enough, forgetting that you had to like the person you were married to as well.

And if he was honest with himself, he'd stopped liking Helen well before he'd stopped loving her.

Cutter took a step back and reality seemed to move around him like a speeded up film. Sounds and smells infiltrated his dulled senses until he started making out the voices of those around him, recognising the words as his own name, echoing back at him.

* * * * * 

“Nick? Nick?” Jenny asked. She moved closer to him and put her hand on his arm. Nick blinked at her, as if seeing her for the first time.

“Helen's still in there,” Cutter said. He turned his eyes away from Jenny to look back at the smoking building.

Jenny felt dread in the pit of her stomach. She looked around, quickly counting the team members and checking that everyone else she cared about was accounted for.

She didn't understand Cutter's fascination with Helen. Maybe if she'd known them when they were young and in love (providing of course that Helen was even capable of such an emotion) it would make more sense. But now, as it stood, Helen only invoked revulsion in Jenny's mind. She couldn't see why anyone would care what happened to Helen - for all they knew _she_ was responsible for the anomalies and now she was trying to destroy them all. Helen clearly didn't care about anything but her own plans, her own twisted beliefs in the way the world should be and how people should behave. Jenny wasn't about to let Cutter fall into her web, not again.

“Don't even think about it,” Jenny said, pulling herself back into the moment. “She isn't worth it.”

“If she's hurt, if she needs help...” Cutter said, still sounding dazed and confused.

“Then let her die,” Jenny said, aware that she was starting to sound a little crazed. “You have to let her go.”

Cutter turned to Jenny and then looked down at his arms which she was grabbing hold of as tightly as possible. “Jenny?” he asked.

“Don't.”

Cutter looked as if he were about to argue, or worse, do something monumentally stupid.

And so she kissed him.

* * * * * 

Cutter was taken completely by surprise when Jenny kissed him. He'd been so caught up in his own thoughts, his own regrets, that paying more than cursory attention to those around him seemed like too much effort. (If truth be told, he'd been feeling that way for months now. Ever since Jenny first came into his life, looking so familiar, but acting anything but). And so he wasn't really in any position to kiss Jenny back, not with a functioning brain, anyway.

But when he pulled away from Jenny and saw the hurt on her face, all thoughts of saving Helen left him. She'd made her bed and she would just have to lie in it, that's all there was to it. So, before Jenny had the chance to regret her decision, he pulled her into another kiss. He tried to tell her through the way he held her close all of the things that he'd never thought he could say to her, and all of the things he wished he'd had the courage to say to Claudia Brown.

Something of his feelings must have bled through into the kiss because Jenny seemed to melt against him; it became less about stopping Cutter and more about starting something. Something that Helen couldn't possibly taint.

“As if I hadn't seen enough disturbing things today,” Lester said from behind them. Cutter rolled his eyes at Jenny as they moved a little apart. Jenny worried at her bottom lip, and Cutter smiled at how young it made her look.

“Time for a fresh start?” Cutter asked. He looked and felt much more like himself now. A weight had been lifted from his shoulders and he could finally see a way out.

“Certainly time for a fresh ARC,” Lester commented. “Are homicidal ex-wives covered by our insurance?” he asked Jenny.

“I'll have to check,” Jenny said, voice dripping with sarcasm.

There was a crackling and buckling of wood and fire and the building next to them started to look like it would topple over at the next gust of wind. Cutter put his hand into Jenny's and tugged.

“Come on,” he said, “we don't need to see this.”

And so, joined by the rest of the team, they slowly filed out and away from the ARC. They had a chance for a new start now, and none of them were going to let it slip out of their grasp.


End file.
